Blogs / The Intersection

Today’s vote was 220 to 215. All eyes to the Senate…

The faces of addiction come in every color and gender. The disease creeps into the lives of those from a wide spectrum of socio-economic levels, backgrounds, and experiences. It crosses continents, latitudes, and longitudes. That’s the thing about addiction–it doesn’t discriminate. Neither should politicians. Particularly when it comes to funding the research to help those who need treatment most.

Jessica’s got a thoughtful post up over at Bioephemera on double standards, politics, and drug treatment research. Having spent two years as a AAAS fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, she understands the gravity of the issue. Jess writes:

..research to help smokers quit is generally portrayed as necessary and important, [while] increasingly, I’m seeing politicians complain that research to help other drug addicts quit is a waste of money.

Maybe it’s because these other addicts are meth addicts, or potheads, or heroin addicts – probably not people you relate to or approve of. That makes it pretty easy for the media to take cheap shots at crack, etc. addicts, and question whether we should waste money trying to help them. But we should get angry about these cheap shots…Tobacco is still a significant public health problem, and I want to do all we can to help smokers (like my mom) quit, but crack, meth, etc. utterly destroys families and communities. We should be leveraging scientific research every way we can to help these people – not throwing them away or taking shots at them because they’re “bad,” or because we can’t relate to them. They’re real people. They have families.

Nevertheless, people routinely and cynically use drug treatment research as a political football.

Of course it’s not news that politicians bash science research to score points with the voting public: Sarah Palin notoriously mocked fruit fly studies along the campaign trail while John McCain took issue with grizzly bear research and the Adler Planetarium. And the truth is that this tactic probably continues to win votes since science remains such a partisan issue. But when it comes to people–and finding the means to treat those most in need–a political agenda is unquestionably not acceptable.

Lots of us like to imagine there are justifiable reasons we’re the most deserving of the best care when sick. The truth is that better treatment and attention should not come as a result of wealth, location, or the social acceptability of a disease. Like Jess, I agree we must let doctors and scientists continue to study drug abuse and test treatments in the real world. That’s the way research progresses and results are achieved.

I’ll leave you with this illuminating video Jess posted that demonstrates the problem:

I’ve been on the road in California all week so it’s been difficult to post, but I’d like to share this wonderful presentation by Elinor Ostrom at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Elinor won the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and I’ve long been a tremendous fan of her work. Take a look:

Watch another terrific talk by Elinor entitled, “Beyond The Tragedy of the Commons” here.

Just as they previously did to John Holdren, conservatives are now trying to raise doubts about another prominent scientist appointed to a top position in the Obama administration: David Michaels, nominated to head OSHA. (Read here for a Washington Times report on the attacks.)

Michaels hasn’t done anything wrong, of course; he merely holds views that scare big business, especially when it comes to the role of science in the regulatory process. Michaels is an expert on this topic (see here for my American Prospect review of his book, Doubt is Our Product), and has taken the lead when it comes to exposing the strategy of tobacco-style manufactured uncertainty, one of the leading tricks used by corporations to undermine protections for public health and the environment.

So the recourse of the right wing? Smear him. Call him a “junk scientist.” Try to derail his nomination.

Effect Measure and Media Matters have much more documentation, and refutation, of the attacks on Michaels. I will only say this: If Obama is to successfully restore science to its “rightful place” in our government, then we need people like Michaels in that government. Now is the time to stand up for him–and the values of science, reason, and evidence-based thinking that he so robustly represents.

by Joel Barkan

Over the past three days, our class has shifted gears to a discussion on the role of ethics in science.  Dr. Craig Callender of UCSD’s philosophy department and Dr. Jay Odenbaugh, a professor of philosophy visiting from Lewis and Clark College, have joined us to offer a philosophical perspective to the topic of marine biodiversity and conservation.  

The discussions have been both meditative and downright wacky:  today, the subject of distributing “reproduction permits” to capable couples for the right to have children—a sort of cap-and-trade system of controlling the world’s population problem—was brought up (as a purely hypothetical, of course).  You can imagine what the rest of our philosophical discussions were like.

One topic that provoked a lively debate was that of scientists using their professional achievements and status to advocate personal values.  For instance:  is it ethical for an accomplished fisheries biologist to advocate for widespread marine protected areas, which may have significant economic effects, but would protect the fisheries valued by the biologist? 

Scientists are responsible for producing results that shape public policy, but should scientists also take on the role of advocating for that policy?  Where do scientists draw the line between their role as researchers and as a citizens?

During this discussion, our course coordinator, Dr. Jeremy Jackson, brought up Dr. James Hansen of NASA as an example of a scientist who has dared to test the imaginary boundary between scientist and public advocate.  Dr. Hansen, who was profiled extensively in Chris Mooney’s Storm World, has famously campaigned for action to limit human-induced climate change.  Dodging a barrage of resistance from global warming skeptics and censorship by his own government, Dr. Hansen remained unwavering in his beliefs.  Dr. Jackson—never one to be muzzled himself—referred to Dr. Hansen as a personal hero in this respect.

When science and politics intersect, roles and boundaries are often muddied.  As Scripps graduate students, our own roles as both scientists and advocates will undoubtedly come into focus as we address issues in marine conservation.

From The New York Times:

A growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation’s top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their reputations to scientific papers that were drafted by ghostwriters working for drug companies — articles that were carefully calibrated to help the manufacturers sell more products.

Experts in medical ethics condemn this practice as a breach of the public trust. Yet many universities have been slow to recognize the extent of the problem, to adopt new ethical rules or to hold faculty members to account.

Those universities may not have much longer to get their houses in order before they find themselves in trouble with Washington.

Read the full article here…

In LA last week, I went on Air America’s “The Young Turks” with Cenk Uygur–and we talked about UA, but mostly, we talked about the arguments of Republican War. It was kinda fun to bash Republicans and the religious right again, and here’s the video:

Audio from this morning’s interview on The Brian Lehrer Show is now available:

TIME’s Frances Romero has published a great interview with Chris about Unscientific America and how to raise the profile of science in our culture. Here’s an excerpt:

TIME: How do you think the debate over global warming has progressed since you published The Republican War on Science?
Mooney: We’ve come such a long way just because of political change — it’s not like the science changed at all, but the politics changed — and yet it’s still an incredible struggle. The vote in the House [on a bill to combat global warming] was superclose, and the Senate’s going to be probably even closer. The reason that issue is so hard is that we have a gigantic gap between scientists and the public — and by association, the politicians that represent them. Scientists have been quite strong on this for 20 years and still only half of America seems to know what they’re talking about.

In Unscientific America you’ve moved on to a more overarching discussion about “scientific illiteracy” in society that threatens to hinder productivity in the U.S. What are some ways we’ve fallen behind or are in danger of falling behind?
Science drives innovation which drives growth, and the concerns are very serious that we are slipping in that area. There are attempts to address it but they are nothing like what you saw after Sputnik when we really, really decided that we were going to be competitive. We’re not throwing everything into it. People just aren’t in tune to the role of science in the future of the country.

The interview touches on many significant themes of our book. Read the full Q&A online at TIME.